“My
father was the first entrepreneur in the family,” Rohan Marley, the sixth of
Bob Marley’s eleven children, said the other day. “He started his own record
label, his own restaurant. He knew that, in order to give something back to the
people, he had to create. You can’t be no philanthropist, no Warren Buffett,
unless you make something first.”

Rohan,
who is forty-two, is also an entrepreneur. He has a leadership role in several
of his family’s businesses, including House of Marley (headphones, speakers),
Zion Rootswear (T-shirts, onesies), and Marley Coffee. The family’s newest
venture, which will launch next year, is called Marley Natural. “It’s a particular
plant,” Rohan said, of the company’s inventory. “One that grows naturally next
to the mango tree, the mint, the paprika. The Hindu sages speak of it. The
rabbis speak of it.” It is marijuana.

Marley
Natural is a partnership between the Marley estate and Privateer Holdings, “a private equity firm shaping the future of the
legal cannabis industry.” (Privateer owns one of the largest providers of
medical marijuana in Canada.) In a video on MarleyNatural.com, a camera
rushes toward verdant mountains. “He advocates for the positive power of the
herb,” a voice-over says. Bob Marley, in archival footage, flips his
dreadlocks. The logo is a Lion of Judah between two green leaves.

Rohan,
who recently shaved his dreadlocks, wore a ruffled white shirt and a porkpie
hat. He sat in the company’s new office, on the Bowery. Around the table were
Brendan Kennedy, the C.E.O. of Privateer, and James Estime, Marley’s valet.
“Three Little Birds” played on a House of Marley stereo. “James, turn the music
down,” Rohan said. Estime, a burly man wearing a winter vest, picked up
Marley’s iPhone and lowered the volume.

Marley
grew up in Jamaica, and moved to the U.S. at the age of twelve. He was a star
linebacker at the University of Miami, even though he was shorter than most of
his teammates, who included Ray Lewis and Dwayne (the Rock) Johnson. (“Bob’s
boys, we’re not scared of tall mountains,” Marley said.) Later, he toured with
the Melody Makers, his siblings’ reggae band. “I was practicing to become a
drummer,” Marley said. “Unfortunately, at that time I was with a woman who
thought my drumming was shit. She killed my spirit to be a musician.” Her name
is Lauryn Hill. They are no longer together. In 1999, he bought a coffee
plantation in Jamaica.

Meanwhile, Kennedy got an M.B.A.
from Yale and worked for an affiliate of Silicon Valley Bank. “My job was to
study niche industries,” Kennedy said. “One day, I heard a pitch from a company
in the medical-cannabis space, and I went, ‘This is a forty-billion-dollar
market, and no one’s taking it seriously.’ ” He left the bank and started
Privateer.

“We’d
been approached by one million people about selling Bob Marley pipes, lighters,
you name it,” Marley said. The Marleys turned them all down, until Creative
Artists Agency, which represents the family, set up a meeting with Privateer.
“When I met this guy”—he gestured toward Kennedy—“I knew: This is the man.”
Kennedy shrugged appreciatively.

“We’re
looking at four to six botanical strains, at first,” Kennedy said.

“The
quality of the herb is very important to us,” Marley said. Marley Natural plans
to sell smokable cannabis in countries where it is legal—the Netherlands,
Uruguay—and, perhaps, in Colorado, Washington State, Oregon, and Alaska. “We’ll
also offer a line of topical creams,” Kennedy said.

A
Privateer employee interrupted with a bit of news: the Oxford English
Dictionary had just named “vape” the word of the year. A plan was formed: a
trip to a nearby vaping lounge, where e-cigarettes are sold and sampled. Marley
Natural plans to carry smoking accessories, and Kennedy believes in market
research.

“You guys
go,” Marley said. “It’s too cold for that shit.” Eventually, he was persuaded.
Estime helped him with his coat.

At the
Henley Vaporium, in Nolita, Marley sat at the “e-cig bar” and browsed a menu of
flavors—Psychotherapy, Stop and Frisk, Cereal Killa. Justin Haber, the
“vapologist” on duty, took apart an e-cigarette to show how it worked.

“Can you
smoke anything you want out of that?” Kennedy asked.

Haber
stiffened. “Hypothetically, if you had the proper—why are you asking?”

Monday, May 4, 2015

The B.C. government is taking steps to
crack down on problem pharmacies, including those that rack up
PharmaCare payments by catering almost exclusively to methadone
patients.

That practice has helped make
methadone and its associated fees the second-biggest drug expense for
B.C.’s drug plan and resulted in clusters of methadone-dispensing
pharmacies in parts of Surrey and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Under a new rule that takes effect June 1,
pharmacies will have to re-enroll with PharmaCare, B.C.’s provincial
drug program, to charge the plan for medications and dispensing fees. As
part of that process, pharmacy owners will have to disclose previous
regulatory problems and ownership details.

Pharmacies
can make almost $6,500 a year in fees per patient dispensing methadone
and up to an additional $13,800 a year dispensing other drugs to the
same patient. The hefty amounts were noted in a review that was prepared
for the Ministry of Health in January – a copy of which was obtained by
The Globe and Mail.

“Until this
regulation, it could be hard for the ministry to deny or cancel the
enrolment of a pharmacy that was taking advantage of vulnerable
patients, or breaking PharmaCare’s billing rules,” Ministry of Health
spokeswoman Cindy MacDougall said in an e-mail. “It was also hard to
make sure pharmacies weren’t employing or owned by people who had
previously broken PharmaCare billing rules or lost their licence to
practise pharmacy.”

The new enrolment
regulation falls under the Pharmaceutical Services Act of 2012 and was
enacted last November and so has been on the horizon for some time. The
January review stated that most people on methadone – which is
prescribed to treat addiction to heroin or other narcotic drugs – are on
other medications, creating a powerful financial incentive for
pharmacists to dole out methadone and other medicines on a daily basis.

B.C.
features one of the highest fees in Canada for dispensing the drug, at
$10 a day, and is only one of three jurisdictions in Canada that
provides a fee – $7.70 a day – for witnessing ingestion. By comparison,
Saskatchewan pays $3.50 a day and the federal Non-insured Health
Benefits Program pays $4.60 a day for a witnessed ingestion.

The
review said methadone-related PharmaCare costs have grown by an average
7.6 per cent a year since the methadone payment program was introduced
in 2001 and now make up the second-highest drug expense for PharmaCare,
accounting for $44-million in costs last year.

Professional fees – for dispensing and witnessing ingestion – account for about 88 per cent of that amount.

B.C.’s
methadone maintenance program was set up in 2001 to improve access to
methadone treatment for people around the province. The Ministry of
Health, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C, and the College
of Pharmacists of B.C. each oversee different aspects of the program.

In
2010, the Ministry of Health and the College of Pharmacists ran a joint
investigation of Lower Mainland pharmacies that looked into issues such
as improper billing and inducements to customers. In an update, the
province says six pharmacies lost their PharmaCare access and
subsequently closed, one pharmacy was sold and one case is still in
process.

Clusters of methadone
pharmacies have popped up in several areas, including parts of Surrey
and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. That neighbourhood contains four of
the 20 highest-billing methadone pharmacies in the province; together,
those four pharmacies received $2.9-million in PharmaCare payments, most
in professional fees, last year, the review states.

One
methadone client, who gave her name as Ariana, said she is now dealing
with a well-run pharmacy that does not offer inducements, which can
include things such as bus passes and coupons for fast-food restaurants.

That
has not always been the case. Saying she has been on methadone for 10
years, she named one pharmacy that paid her $20 a week to fill her
methadone prescription and $5 a week for each of her three other
medications.

“They are preying on us, who are in poverty – and they get rich,” Ariana said.

The
January review cautioned against any quick changes, saying methadone
maintenance treatment is complex and “any hasty changes to its service
delivery, [Methadone Maintenance Payment Program] or otherwise, could
have immediate and detrimental impact on methadone patients – an already
extremely vulnerable population.”

The review said consultation with stakeholders would begin in early 2015.

Endorsement

"All treatment centres in B.C. should get involved and support the Drug Prevention Network. As one collective voice we need to send the message that treatment works and it saves lives. There are recovery houses, treatment centers, private, government funded, long term, short term, detox, therapeutic communities etc. Let's help support prevention and help educate the public."